Entries - County: Lawrence - Starting with L

When Lake Charles State Park was constructed in the 1960s, it was the first of its kind and size in the nation. It is located in the foothills of the Ozarks near the Black River in Lawrence County and is a very popular family recreation area in northeastern Arkansas. Lake Charles was originally planned as a watershed/flood protection project near the Black River in Lawrence County. In 1956, the Lawrence County Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors sponsored an application under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Program. When the application was submitted, the sponsors were thinking only of watershed protection on the uplands and flood prevention on the bottomlands. However, before an intensive …

The “Mother of Counties,” Lawrence County once covered a majority of northern Arkansas, an enormous stretch of land ultimately forming thirty-one counties. Present-day Lawrence County straddles the Black River, a natural boundary separating the lowlands of the Mississippi Delta from the foothills of the Ozark Plateau. Long dominated by cotton production, this agricultural county now produces rice, soybeans, corn, and sorghum. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood The Osage hunted in what would become Lawrence County, although they had no settlements there. The eastern portion of the county may have been visited in 1541 during a side trip of the expedition of Hernando de Soto. Arkansas became United States territory with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Named for War of 1812 …

The Lawrence County Courthouse is located in Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County), within the city’s commercial district on Main Street. The building, completed in 1966, stands as one of the newer county seats of justice in Arkansas, with its cohorts erected largely at the end of the nineteenth century or during the New Deal era of the 1930s. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program considers this mid-century building in the New Formalism style as architecturally and historically significant to Lawrence County’s legal history. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 28, 2015. In 1870, the Arkansas General Assembly split Lawrence County into two judicial districts to accommodate residents traveling long distances for county business. Legislators designated Walnut …

Lawrence Memorial Hospital opened in Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County) on June 1, 1960, becoming the largest employer in Lawrence County and the major economic contributor to the city of Walnut Ridge. After World War II ended, President Harry S. Truman focused much of his attention on healthcare reform. In 1946, he secured passage of the Hill-Burton Act, which provided federal grants and loans for the construction of local hospitals and other health facilities. Hoping to tap into these new federal funds, leaders in Lawrence County made an effort to establish a local hospital in 1947. But when the county’s citizens went to the polls to decide whether the county would raise the tax revenue to cover the local share of …

The Reverend Elijah (Eli) Lindsey was an important figure in early Arkansas Methodism. At age eighteen, living near the present town of Jesup (Lawrence County), he traveled and organized the Spring River Circuit and is thus celebrated as the first to preach and spread the message of Methodism in Arkansas. Eli Lindsey was born in 1797 in Rutherford County, North Carolina, to James William Lindsey Jr. and Rachel Burkett Lindsey. His father fought with the patriots at the significant Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780. By 1790, these families had moved to Spartanburg County, South Carolina, and they resided in Rutherford County, North Carolina, by 1800. Lindsey’s family gradually moved to Christian County, Kentucky, where his uncle Carlton …

Lynn is a town on State Highway 25 in western Lawrence County. Although the area has long been settled, the population of Lynn has grown little. Osage from the north hunted and fished in northern Arkansas for many years until the Louisiana Purchase added the land to the United States. The Black River runs through the area where Lynn would be established. During territorial times, a military road known as the Southwest Trail connected Missouri to Fulton (Hempstead County), and this route reportedly ran through the area where Lynn is today. As a result, the land was soon claimed by settlers: Dempsey Trotman in 1820 and both John Kylor and John D. Williams in 1824. Lawrence County survived the Civil …